Thamesbank Credit Union Privacy Notice

Thamesbank Credit Union is a community-based, financial co-operative that delivers a range of fair, affordable and accessible financial services to people who live or work in Hounslow, Richmond, Kingston, Wandsworth or Spelthorne.

We are committed to protecting our members’ privacy. This is explained in our full privacy statement available here. A summary of your rights is given below.

Thamesbank credit union may process, transfer and/or share personal information in the following ways:
• To set up and manage your account and loans
• To provide marketing data to help us advertise and set up appropriate saving and loan accounts
• To report to various management, regulatory, and financial bodies

We guarantee that your data will be used with your consent and not be shared with anybody for other purposes.

Under the data protection legislation, you have the following rights
• To access your personal data and have any errors corrected
• The right to restrict, or object to processing and for data to be deleted once no longer required
• To withdraw consent
• To complain to the Information Commissioner’s office at https://ico.org.uk or by post.

In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks on you with one or more credit reference agencies (“CRAs”). Where you take banking services from us, we may also make periodic searches at CRAs to manage your account with us.

To do this, we will supply your personal information to CRAs and they will give us information about you. This will include information from your credit application and about your financial situation and financial history. CRAs will supply to us both public (including the electoral register) and shared credit, financial situation and financial history information and fraud prevention information.

We will use this information to:

• Assess your creditworthiness and whether you can afford to take the product;
• Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us;
• Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering;
• Manage your account(s);
• Trace and recover debts; and
• Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate for your circumstances.

We will continue to exchange information about you with CRAs while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRAs about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRAs will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs.

When CRAs receive a search from us they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders.

If you are making a joint application, or tell us that you have a spouse or financial associate, we will link your records together, so you should make sure you discuss this with them, and share with them this information, before lodging the application. CRAs will also link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such time as you or your partner successfully files for a disassociation with the CRAs to break that link.

The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail at here. CRAIN is also accessible from each of the three CRAs – clicking on any of these three links will also take you to the same CRAIN document: Transunion; Equifax; Experian.

As a member of the Association of British Credit Unions, and part of the World Council of Credit Unions, The Credit Union aims to provide members with quality financial services.

We welcome feedback from members and will use this feedback to improve services for all members and to work to put things right for members who are dissatisfied with our service.

You can find out more about the procedure here.

For more information about how your rights apply to your membership of Thamesbank Credit Union or to make a request under your rights, you can contact us at admin@thamesbank.org. We will respond within one week or provide an explanation of the reason for our delay.

Thamesbank Credit Union
The Bungalow, Pinkwell Lane, Hayes Middlesex, UB3 1PE
Phone 020 8756 3865
Website www.thamesbank.org.

We can update this Privacy Policy at any time and ideally you should check it regularly here for updates. We won’t alert you for every small change, but if there are any important changes to the Policy or how we use your information, we will let you know and where appropriate ask for your consent.

Policy agreed May 2018